As Cadfael came through the court after dinner, to return to his labours in the herb-garden, he encountered Elave. The young man was just coming down the steps from the guest-hall, in movement and countenance bright and vehement, like a tool honed for fine use. He was still roused and ready to be aggressive after the rough passage of his master’s body to its desired resting-place, the bones of his face showed polished with tension, and his prow of a nose quested belligerently on the summer air.
‘You look ready to bite,’ said Cadfael, coming by design face to face with him.
The boy looked back at him for a moment uncertain how to respond, where even this unalarming presence was still an unknown quantity. Then he grinned, and the sharp tension eased.
‘Not you, at any rate, Brother! If I showed my teeth, did I not have cause?’
‘Well, at least you know our abbot all the better for it. You have what you asked. But as well keep a lock on your lips until the other one is gone. One way to be sure of saying nothing that can be taken amiss is to say nothing at all. Another is to agree with whatever the prelates say. But I doubt that would have much appeal for you.’
‘It’s like threading a way between archers in ambush,’ said Elave, relaxing. ‘For a cloistered man, Brother, you say things aside from the ordinary yourself.’
‘We’re none of us as ordinary as all that. What I feel, when the divines begin talking doctrine, is that God speaks all languages, and whatever is said to him or of him in any tongue will need no interpreter. And if it’s devoutly meant, no apology. How is that hand of yours? No inflammation?’
Elave shifted the box he was carrying to his other arm, and showed the faded scar in his palm, still slightly puffed and pink round the healed punctures.
‘Come round with me to my workshop, if you’ve the time to spare,’ Cadfael invited, ‘and let me dress that again for you. And that will be the last you need think of it.’ He cast a glance at the box tucked under the young man’s arm. ‘But you have errands to do in the town? You’ll be off to visit William’s kinsfolk.’
‘They’ll need to know of his burying, tomorrow,’ said Elave. ‘They’ll be here. There was always a good feeling among them all, never bad blood. It was Girard’s wife who kept the house for the whole family. I must go and tell them what’s arranged. But there’s no haste, I daresay once I’m up there it will be for the rest of the day and into the evening.’
They fell in amicably together, side by side, out of the court and through the rose garden, rounding the thick hedge. As soon as they entered the walled garden the sun-warmed scent of the herbs rose to enfold them in a cloud of fragrance, every step along the gravel path between the beds stirring wave on wave of sweetness.
‘Shame to go withindoors on such a day,’ said Cadfael. ‘Sit down here in the sun, I’ll bring the lotion out to you.’
Elave sat down willingly on the bench by the north wall, tilting his face up to the sun, and laid his burden down beside him. Cadfael eyed it with interest, but went first to bring out the cleansing lotion, and anoint the fading wound once again.
‘You’ll feel no more of that now, it’s clean enough. Young flesh heals well, and you’ve surely been through more risks crossing the world and back than you should be meeting here in Shrewsbury.’ He stoppered the flask, and sat down beside his guest. ‘I suppose they won’t even know yet, that you’re back and their kinsman dead – the family there in the town?’
‘Not yet, no. There was barely time last night to get my master well bestowed, and what with the dispute in chapter this morning, I’ve had no chance yet to get word to them. You know them – his nephews? Girard sees to the flock and the sales, and fetches in the wool clips from the others he deals for. Jevan always managed the vellum making, even in William’s day. Come to think of it, for all I know things may be changed there since we left.’
‘You’ll find them all living,’ said Cadfael reassuringly, ‘that I do know. Not that we see much of them down here in the Foregate. They come sometimes on festival days, but they have their own church at Saint Alkmund’s.’ He eyed the box Elave had laid down on the bench between them. ‘Something William was bringing back to them? May I look? Faith, I own I’m looking already, I can’t take my eyes from it. That’s a wonderful piece of carving. And old, surely.’
Elave looked down at it with the critical appreciation and indifferent detachment of one to whom it meant simply an errand to be discharged, something he would be glad to hand over and be rid of. But he took it up readily and placed it in Cadfael’s hands to be examined closely.
‘I have to take it by way of a dowry for the girl. When he grew too ill to go on he thought of her, seeing he’d taken her into his household from the day she was born. So he gave me this to bring to Girard, to be used for her when she marries. It’s a poor lookout for a girl with no dowry when it comes to getting a husband.’
‘I remember there was a little girl,’ said Cadfael, turning the box in his hands with admiration. It was enough to excite the artist in any man. Fashioned from some dark eastern wood, about a foot long by eight inches wide and four deep, the lid flawlessly fitted, with a small, gilded lock. The under surface was plain, polished to a lustrous darkness almost black, the upper surface and the edges of the lid beautifully and intricately carved in a tracery of vine leaves and grapes, and in the centre of the lid a lozenge containing an ivory plaque, an aureoled head, full-face, with great Byzantine eyes. It was so old that the sharp edges had been slightly smoothed and rounded by handling, but the lines of the carving were still picked out in gold.
‘Fine work!’ said Cadfael, handling it reverently. He balanced it in his hands, and it hung like a solid mass of wood, nothing shifting within. ‘You never wondered what was in it?’
Elave looked faintly surprised, and hoisted indifferent shoulders. ‘It was packed away, and I had other things to think about I’ve only this past half-hour got it out of the baggage-roll. No, I never did wonder. I took it he’d saved up some money for her. I’m just handing it over to Girard as I was told to do. It’s the girl’s, not mine.’
‘You don’t know where he got it?’
‘Oh, yes, I know where he bought it. From a poor deacon in the market in Tripoli, just before we took ship for Cyprus and Thessalonika on our way home. There were Christian fugitives beginning to drift in then from beyond Edessa, turned out of their monasteries by mamluk raiders from Mosul. They came with next to nothing, they had to sell whatever they’d contrived to bring with them in order to live. William drove shrewd bargains among the merchants, but he dealt fairly with those poor souls. They said life was becoming hard and dangerous in those parts. The journey out we made the slow way, by land. William wanted to see the great collection of relics in Constantinople. But coming home we started by sea. There are plenty of Greek and Italian merchant ships plying as far as Thessalonika, some even all the way to Bari and Venice.’
‘There was a time,’ mused Cadfael, drawn back through the years, ‘when I knew those seas very well. How did you fare for lodging on the way out, all those miles afoot?’
‘Now and then we went a piece in company, but mostly it was we two alone. The monks of Cluny have hospices all across France and down through Italy, even close by the emperor’s city they have a house for pilgrims. And as soon as you reach the Holy Land the Knights of Saint John provide shelter everywhere. It’s a great thing to have done,’ said Elave, looking back in awe and wonder. ‘Along the way a man lives a day at a time, and looks no further ahead than the next day, and no further behind than the day just passed. Now I see it whole, and it is wonderful.’
‘But not all good,’ said Cadfael. ‘That couldn’t be, we couldn’t ask it. Remember the cold and the rain and the hunger at times, and losses by thieves now and then, and a few knocks from those who prey on travellers – oh, never tell me you met none! And the weariness, and the times when William fell ill, the bad food, the sour water, the stones of the road. You’ve met all that. Every man who travels that far across the world has met it all.’
‘I do remember all that,’ said Elave sturdily, ‘but it is still wonderful.’
‘Good! So it should be,’ said Cadfael, sighing. ‘Lad, I should be glad to sit and talk with you about every step of the way, when your time’s free. You go and deliver your box to Master Girard, and that’s your duty done. And what will you do now? Go back to work for them as before?’
‘No, not that. It was for William I worked. They have their own clerk, I wouldn’t wish to displace him, and they don’t need two. Besides, I want more, and different. I’ll take time to look about me. I’ve come back with more skills than when I went, I’d like to use them.’ He rose, and tucked the carved box securely under his arm.
‘I’ve forgotten,’ said Cadfael, following the gesture thoughtfully, ‘if indeed I ever knew – how did he come by the child? He had none of his own, and as far as I know, Girard has none, and the other brother has never married. Where did the girl come from? Some foundling he took in?’
‘You could say so. They had a serving maid, a simple soul, who fell foul of a small huckster at the fair one year, and brought forth a daughter. William gave houseroom to the pair of them, and Margaret cared for the baby like her own child, and when the mother died they simply kept the girl. A pretty little thing she was. She had more wit than her mother. It was William named her Fortunata, for he said she’d come into the world with nothing, not even a father, and still found herself a home and a family, and so she’d still fall on her feet lifelong. She was eleven, rising twelve,’ said Elave, ‘when we set out, and grown into a skinny, awkward little thing all teeth and elbows. They say the prettiest pups make the ugliest dogs. She’ll need a decent dowry to make up for her gawky looks.’
He stretched his long person, hoisted his box more firmly under his arm, dipped his fair head in a small, friendly reverence, and was off along the path, his haste to discharge all the final duties with which he had been entrusted tempered somewhat by a sense of the seven years since he had seen William’s family, and the inevitable estrangement time must have brought about, until now scarcely realised. What had once been familiar was now alien, and it would take time to edge his way back to it. Cadfael watched him disappear round the corner of the box hedge, torn between sympathy and envy.
*
The house of Girard of Lythwood, like so many of the merchant burgages of Shrewsbury, was in the shape of an L, the short base directly on the street, and pierced by an arched entry leading through to the yard and garden behind. The base of the L was of only one storey, and provided the shop where Jevan, the younger brother, stored and sold his finished leaves and gatherings of vellum and the cured skins from which they were folded and cut to order. The upright of the L showed its gable end to the street, and consisted of a low undercroft and the living floor above, with a loft in the steep roof that provided extra sleeping quarters. The entire burgage was not large, space being valuable within so enclosed a town, in its tight noose of river. Outside the loop, in the suburbs of Frankwell on one side and the Foregate on the other, there was room to expand, but within the wall every inch of ground had to be used to the best advantage.
Elave halted before the house, and stood a moment to take in the strangeness of what he felt, a sudden warmth of homecoming, an almost panic reluctance to go in and declare himself, a mute wonder at the smallness of the house that had been his home for a number of years. In the overwhelming basilicas of Constantinople, as in the profound isolation of deserts, a man grows used to immensity.
He went in slowly through the narrow entry and into the yard. On his right the stables, the byre for the cow, the store shed and low coop for the chickens were just as he remembered them, and on his left the house door stood wide open, as it always had on such summer days. A woman was just coming up from the garden that stretched away beyond the house, with a basket of clothes in her arms, crisp washing just gathered from the hedge. She observed the stranger entering, and quickened her step to meet him.
‘Goodday, sir! If you’re wanting my husband...’ She halted there, astonished, recognising but not believing at first what she saw. Between eighteen and twenty-five a young man does not change so much as to be unrecognisable to his own family, however he may have filled out and matured during that time. It was simply that she had had no warning, no word to indicate that he was within five hundred miles of her.
‘Mistress Margaret,’ said Elave, ‘you’ve not forgotten me?’
The voice completed what his face had begun. She flushed bright with acceptance and evident pleasure. ‘Dear, now, and it is you! Just for a moment there you had me struck out of my wits, thinking I was seeing visions, and you still half the world away, in some outlandish place. Well, now, and here you are safe and sound, after all that journeying. Glad I am to see you again, boy, and so will Girard and Jevan be. Who’d have thought you’d spring out of nowhere like this, all in a moment, and just in time for Saint Winifred’s festival. Come within, come, let me put this laundry down and get you a draught to drink, and tell me how you’ve fared all this long time.’
She freed a hand to take him warmly by the arm and usher him within, to a bench by the unshuttered window of the hall, with such voluble goodwill that his silence passed unnoticed. She was a neat, brown-haired, bustling woman in her middle forties, healthy and hardworking and a good and discreet neighbour, and her shining housekeeping reflected her own strong-willed brightness.
‘Girard’s away making up the wool clip, he’ll be a day or so yet. His face will be a sight to see when he comes in and sees Uncle William sitting here at the table like in the old days. Where is he? Is he following you up now, or had he business below at the abbey?’
Elave drew breath and said what had to be said. ‘He’ll not be coming, Mistress.’
‘Not coming?’ she said, astonished, turning sharply in the doorway of her larder.
‘Sorry I am to have no better word to bring you. Master William died in France, before we could embark for home. But I’ve brought him home, as I promised him I would. He lies at the abbey now, and tomorrow he’s to be buried there, in the cemetery among the patrons of the house.’
She stood motionless, staring at him with pitcher and cup forgotten in her hands, and for a long moment she was silent.
‘It was what he wanted,’ said Elave. ‘He did what he set out to do, and he has what he wanted.’
‘Not everyone can say as much,’ said Margaret slowly. ‘So Uncle William’s gone! Business below at the abbey, did I say? And so he has, but not as I supposed. And you left to bring him over the sea alone! And Girard away, and who’s to tell where at this moment? It will grieve him if he’s not here to pay the last dues to a good man.’ She shook herself, and stirred out of her brief stillness, practical always. ‘Well, now, no fault of yours, you did well by him, and have no need to look back. Sit you down and be easy. You’re home, at least, done your wanderings for the time being, you can do with a rest.’
She brought him ale, and sat down beside him, considering without distress all that was now needful. A competent woman, she would have everything ordered and seemly whether her husband returned in time or not.
‘He was nearing eighty years old,’ she said, ‘by my reckoning. He had a good life, and was a good kinsman and a good neighbour, and he ended doing a blessed thing, and one that he wanted with all his heart, once that old preacher from St. Osyth’s put the thought in his mind. There,’ said Margaret, shaking her head with a sigh, ‘here I am harking back like a fool, and I never meant to. Time’s short! I should have thought the abbot could have sent us word of the need as soon as you came in at the gatehouse.’
‘He knew nothing of it until this morning at chapter. He’s been here only four years, and we’ve been gone seven. But everything is in hand now.’
‘Maybe it is, down there, but I must see to it that all’s ready up here, for there’ll be all the neighbours in to join us, and I hope you’ll come back with us, after the funeral. Conan’s here, that’s lucky, I’ll send him west to see if he can find Girard in time, though there’s no knowing just where he’ll be. There are six flocks he has to deal with out there. Sit you here quietly, while I go and bring Jevan from the shop, and Aldwin from his books, and you can tell us all how it was with the old man. Fortunata’s off in the town marketing, but she’ll surely be back soon.’
She was off on the instant, bustling out to fetch Jevan out of his shop, and Elave was left breathless and mute with her ready volubility, having had no chance as yet to mention the charge he had still to deliver. In a few minutes she was back with the vellum-maker, the clerk, and the shepherd Conan hard on her heels, the entire core of the household but for the absent fosterchild. All these Elave knew well from his former service, and only one was much changed. Conan had been a youngster of twenty when last seen, slender and willowy, now he had broadened out and put on flesh and muscle, swelling into gross good looks, ruddy and strong with outdoor living. Aldwin had entered the household in Girard’s service, and stepped into Elave’s shoes when William took his own boy with him on pilgrimage. A man of past forty at that time, barely literate but quick with numbers as a gift of nature, Aldwin looked much the same now at nearing fifty, but that his hair had rather more grey in it, and was thinning on the crown. He had had to work hard to earn his place and hold it, and his long face had set into defensive lines of effort and anxiety. Elave had got his letters early, from a priest who had seen his small parishioner’s promise and taken pains to bring it to fruit, and the boy had shamelessly enjoyed his superiority when he had worked in Aldwin’s company. He remembered now how he had happily passed on his own skills to the much older man, not out of any genuine wish to help him, but rather to impress and dazzle both Aldwin and the observers with his own cleverness. He was older and wiser now, he had discovered how great was the world and how small his own person. He was glad that Aldwin should have this secure place, this sound roof over his head, and no one now to threaten his tenure.
Jevan of Lythwood was just past forty, seven years younger than his brother, tall, erect and lightly built, with a clean-shaven, scholarly face. He had not been formally educated in boyhood, but by reason of taking early to the craft of vellum-making he had come to the notice of lettered men who bought from him, monastics, clerks, even a few among the lords of local manors who had some learning, and being of very quick and eager intelligence he had set himself to learn from them, aroused their interest to help him forward, and turned himself into a scholar, the only person in this house who could read Latin, or more than a few words of English. It was good for business that the seller of parchments should measure up to the quality of his work, and understand the uses the cultured world made of it.
All these came hurrying in on Margaret’s heels to gather familiarly around the table, and welcome back the traveller and his news. The loss of William, old, fulfilled, and delivered from this world in a state of grace and to the resting-place he had desired, was not a tragedy, but the completion of an altogether satisfactory life, the more easily and readily accepted because he had been gone from this household for seven years, and the gap he had left had closed gently, and had not now been torn open again by his recovered presence. Elave told what he could of the journey home, of the recurring bouts of illness, and the death, a gentle death in a clean bed and with a soul confessed and shriven, at Valognes, not far from the port where he should have embarked for home.
‘And his funeral is to be tomorrow,’ said Jevan. ‘At what hour?’
‘After the Mass at ten. The abbot is to take the office himself. He stood by my master’s claim for admittance,’ said Elave by way of explanation, ‘against some visiting canon there from Canterbury. One of the bishop’s deacons is travelling with him, and let out like a fool some old business of falling out with a travelling preacher, years ago, and this Gerbert would have every word dragged out again, and wanted to call William a heretic and refuse him entry, but the abbot set his foot firmly on that and let him in. I came close,’ admitted Elave, roused to recollection, ‘to sticking my own neck in a heretic’s collar, arguing with the man. And he’s one who doesn’t take kindly to being opposed. He could hardly turn on the abbot in his own house, but I doubt he feels much love for me. I’d better keep my head low till he moves on.’
‘You did quite right,’ said Margaret warmly, ‘to stand by your master. I hope it’s done you no harm.’
‘Oh, surely not! It’s all past now. You’ll be at the Mass tomorrow?’
‘Every man of us,’ said Jevan, ‘and the women, too. And Girard, if we can find him in time, but he’s on the move, and may be near the border by now. He meant to come back for Saint Winifred’s feast, but there’s always the chance of delays among the border flocks.’
Elave had left the wooden box lying on the bench under the window. He rose to fetch it to the table. All eyes settled upon it with interest.
‘This I was ordered to deliver into Master Girard’s hands. Master William sent it to him to be held in trust for Fortunata until her marriage. It’s her dowry. When he was so ill he thought of her, and said she must have a dowry. And this is what he sent.’
Jevan was the first to reach out to touch and handle it, fascinated by the beauty of the carving.
‘This is rare work. Somewhere in the east he found this?’ He took it up, surprised at the weight. ‘It makes a handsome treasury. What’s within it?’
‘That I don’t know. It was near his death when he gave it to me and told me what he wanted. Nothing more, and I never questioned him. I had enough to do, then and afterwards.’
‘So you did,’ said Margaret, ‘and you did it very well, and we owe you thanks, for he was our kin, and a good man, and I’m glad he had so good a lad to see him safely all that way and back again home.’ She took up the box from the table, where Jevan had laid it down, and was fingering the gilded carving with evident admiration. ‘Well, if it was sent to Girard, I’ll keep it aside until Girard comes home. This is the business of the man of the house.’
‘Even the key,’ said Jevan, ‘is a piece of art. So our Fortunata lives up to her name, as Uncle William always said she would. And the lucky girl still out marketing, and doesn’t yet know of her fortune!’
Margaret opened the tall press in a corner of the room, and laid both box and key on an upper shelf within. ‘There it stays until my husband comes home, and he’ll take good care of it until my girl shows a fancy to get wed, and maybe sets eyes on the lad she wants for husband.’
All eyes had followed William’s gift to its hiding-place. Aldwin said sourly: ‘There’ll be aplenty will fancy her for wife, if they get wind she has goods to bring with her. She’ll have need of your good counsel, Mistress.’
Conan had said nothing at all. He had never been a talker. His eyes followed the box until the door of the press closed on it, but all he had to say throughout was said at the last, when Elave rose to take his leave. The shepherd rose with him.
‘I’ll be off, then, and take the pony, and see if I can find where the master is. But whether or not, I’ll be back by nightfall.’
*
They were all dispersing to their various occupations when Margaret drew Elave back by the sleeve, delaying him until the rest had gone.
‘You’ll understand, I’m sure, how it is,’ she said confidingly. ‘I wouldn’t say anything but just to you, Elave. You were always a good lad with the accounts, and worked hard, and to tell the honest truth, Aldwin is no match for you, though he does his best, and can manage well enough all that’s required of him. But he’s getting older, and has no home or folks of his own, and what would he do if we parted with him now? You’re young, there’s many a merchant would be glad to hire you, with your knowledge of the world. You won’t take it amiss...’
Elave had caught her drift long before this, and broke in hastily to reassure her. ‘No, no, never think of it! I never expected to have my old place back. I wouldn’t for the world put Aldwin’s nose out of joint. I’m glad he should be secure the rest of his life. Never trouble for me, I shall look about me and find work to do. And as for bearing any grudge that I’m not asked back, I never so much as thought of it. Nothing but good have I had from this house, and I shan’t forget it. No, Aldwin can go on with his labours with all my goodwill.’
‘That’s like the lad I remember!’ she said with hearty relief. ‘I knew you’d take it as it’s meant. I hope you may get good service with some travelling merchant, one that trades oversea, that would suit you, after all you’ve seen and done. But you will come up with us tomorrow after Uncle William’s burial, and take meat with us?’
He promised readily, glad to have their relationship established and understood. To tell the truth, he thought he might have felt confined and restricted here now, dealing with the buying of stock and paying of wages, the weighing and marketing of wool, and the small profits and expenses of a good but limited business. He was not yet sure what he did want, he could afford to spend a little while looking round before committing himself. Going out at the hall door he came shoulder to shoulder with Conan, on his way out to the stable, and dropped back to let Margaret’s messenger go first.
A young woman with a basket on her arm had just emerged from the narrow entry that led to the street, and was crossing the yard towards them. She was not over-tall, but looked tall by reason of her erect bearing and long, free step, light and springy from the ground like the gait of a mettlesome colt. Her plain grey gown swayed with the lissome movement of a trim body, and the well-poised head on her long neck was crowned with a great coiled braid of dark hair lit with shadowy gleams of red. Halfway across the yard towards them she halted abruptly, gazing open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and suddenly she laughed aloud, a joyous, silver sound of pleasurable amazement.
‘You!’ she said, in a soft, delighted cry. ‘Is it truth? I am not dreaming?’
She stopped them both on the instant, brought up short by the warmth of her greeting, Elave gaping like an idiot at this unknown girl who yet appeared not only to recognise him, but to take pleasure in the recognition, Conan fallen warily silent beside him, his face expressionless, his eyes roving from one face to the other, narrowed and intent.
‘Do you not know me?’ cried the girl’s clear bell of a voice, through the bubbling spring of her laughter.
Fool that he was, who else could she be, coming in thus bare-headed from the shops of the town? But it was true, he would not have known her. The thin little pointed face had filled out into a smooth ivory oval, the teeth that had looked far too many and too large for her mouth shone now even and white between dark-rose lips that smiled at his astonishment and confusion. All the sharp little bones had rounded into grace. The long hair that had hung in elflocks round scrawny childish shoulders looked like a crown, thus braided and coiled upon her head, and the greenish hazel eyes whose stare he had found disconcerting seven years ago now sparkled and glowed with pleasure at seeing him again, a very arresting flattery.
‘I know you now,’ he said, fumbling for words. ‘But you’re changed!’
‘You are not,’ she said. ‘Browner, perhaps, and your hair’s even fairer than it used to be, but I’d have known you anywhere. And you turn up like this without a word of warning, and they were letting you go without waiting for me?’
‘I’m coming again tomorrow,’ he said, and hesitated to attempt the explanation, here in the yard, with Conan still lingering on the borders of their meeting. ‘Mistress Margaret will tell you about it. I had messages to bring...’
‘If you knew’ said Fortunata, ‘how often and how long we’ve talked of you both, and wondered how you were faring in those far places. It’s not every day we have kinsfolk setting out on such an adventure, do you think we never gave you a thought?’
Hardly once in all those years had it entered his mind to wonder about any of those left behind. Closest to him in this house, and alone significant, had been William, and with William he had gone, blithely, without a thought for anyone left to continue life here, least of all a leggy little girl of eleven with a spotty skin and a disconcerting stare.
‘I doubt,’ he said, abashed, ‘that I ever deserved you should.’
‘What has desert to do with it?’ she said. ‘And you were leaving now until tomorrow? No, that you can’t! Come back with me into the house, if only for an hour. Why must I wait until tomorrow to get used to seeing you again?’
She had him by the hand, turning him back towards the open door, and though he knew it was no more than the open and gallant friendliness of one who had known him from her childhood, and wished him well in absence as she wished well to all men of goodwill – nothing more than that, not yet! – he went with her like a bidden child, silenced and charmed. He would have gone wherever she led him. He had that to tell her that would cloud her brightness for a while, and afterwards no rights in her or in this house, no reason to believe she would ever be more to him than she was now, or he to her. But he went with her, and the warm dimness of the hall received them.
Conan looked after them for a long moment, before he went on towards the stable, his thick brows drawn together, and his wits very busy in his head.